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Lena Bianchi
Name: Magdalena 'Lena' Del Toro Bianchi Gender: Female Age: 19 Grade: 12 School: Saint Editha Academy Hobbies and Interests: Sketching, painting specifically fingerpainting, bead and paper art, crocheting, meditation, classical music, singing and choir, interior design, holiday aesthetics and decor, church volunteering. Appearance: '''Lena is 5’5”. She is olive tone skinned. She is skinny and has a rectangular shape body without much in the way of especially defined curves, with noticeably bony wrists and elbows especially. She weighs 115 lb. Her facial shape is overall rounded. She does not have acne but she has some discolored patches of lighter and drier skin over her temples and cheeks due to untreated recurrent fungal infections (Pityriasis alba). She has bony cheeks and a strongly defined roundness of her chin. Her eyes are naturally expressive: pale blue but blurring into browns closer to the pupil. Her eyebrows are average. She has an average nose with a slightly tall bridge. She has pale and usually dry flesh color lips that are not especially shapely. Her pale dusky brunette hair is thick and curly, it grows down to the blades of her back. She usually wears it in a simple, messy ponytail. Outside of school she wears plain clothes due to poverty. She prefers conservative hoodies that are usually patchy and frayed; and plain jeans usually pale and washed out in color. She uses little in the way of jewelry and makeup, though she does have her ears pierced and wears little faux gold ring earrings. She has a Italian accent, coloring some of her words heavily. Her vocal quality is thin, she can be slightly shrill when emotional, and otherwise airy and hard to hear between her accent and a lack of enunciation. She is trilingual. She speaks both Spanish and Italian better than she can English, her grasp of English is conversant, but she is considered below grade level and she is assigned to remedial English classes. On the day of the abduction Lena wore her school uniform, with skirt and blazer options. Her uniform is notably one size too large due to fitting and budget issues. She wore her usual earrings. Strung from one pocket of her blazer by thin string was a fist size jack-o-lantern faced pumpkin, made of carefully folded and glued paper. '''Biography: Magdalena Bianchi was born on December 24, 2005, in the city of Choele Choel. Her parents were Martín Del Toro, a farmer, and Mariana Bianchi, a music teacher and daughter of local fireworks technician Alejandro Godino Bianchi. Lena was raised on an organic farm, a large operations passed onto Aidan by his own father and modernized with the help of investors from the city. The farm was prosperous and employed over 100 workers. Lena spent her toddler years immersed in the strict schedule, work heavy lifestyle of a farm. She was naturally a shy child, even when her mother would arrange playdates with other mothers from town she was friends with Lena was tough to get out of her shell, and sometimes her playmate would even give up on Lena in frustration. When there was success Lena was a curious if quiet playmate, well capable of learning new games. She was a hands-on sort of young child, disposed to kinesthetic activities like tag and so on. By the time she began initial education she was a member of a small circle of young guys and girls who would do supervised crafts, which young Lena seemed to enjoy most out of all of her preschool activities. She was calm and focused when working on the activities: fingerpaints, glue collages, and bead art, and she showed precociously exacting and precise work, producing much cleaner artworks than her peers. Her mother would remark to her father that Lena had a gift, Martín was skeptical but was willing to be open minded. As long as the business was successful the parents agreed that they would let Lena pursue an artistic path in her education, perhaps even through college. In 2011, when Lena was about five and a half years old and had begun her first year of primary. Lena was a happy if still rather quiet child. She showed youthful interest in the explosives her maternal grandfather made, to his delight. She helped out with age-appropriate chores on the farm dutifully. She openly considered herself to be a Catholic girl, devoted to family, who regularly went to church. Though she was sometimes bored there as one would expect of a child her age she still professed her faith proudly when asked. Lena was still too young to understand the concept of the war that raged through her country, she had asked about the loudness of the odd American air units flying overhead and had been honestly answered, but besides this Americans were nothing more than a distant boogeyman to her. On the first week of October, 2011 the Río Negro Valley where Choele Choel was found was blitzed by a sizable detachment of American paratroopers landing at General Roca and working their way downstream. They hoped to surround and besiege the fortified position in the strategic port of Bahía Blanca by destroying bridges and important munitions plants. Their advance stalled in Choele Choel where locals put up a fight long enough for Argentinian reinforcements to arrive. Within two hours the entire town was consumed in fighting, buildings being torched or blown apart by American tanks, families getting gunned down by Americans looking for places to fortify while they tried to secure the area. Martín desperately drove through the chaos on the streets, finding only his wife and her father before they raced for the school. Lena was found in her classroom, huddled up alongside her other panicking or stunned peers. Their teacher had been killed by a stray bullet breaking through the classroom window, her neck gorily lacerated. After panicked debate punctuated by encroaching gunfire Martín and Mariana grabbed Lena and two or three other children, determined to drive them all to safety. A nightmarish three days followed which Lena remembers in both blurred, barely coherent memories and extremely clear visions that still haunt her to this day. The windows and tires on the van were shot out at some point and they abandoned it, trying to make it through the remainder countryside on foot. Lena's distinctly detailed memories include the entire group huddled in a cellar, quietly listening to boots hitting the ground overhead. She remembers scavenging through a kitchen with an abandoned dead body in it and stealing from the cabinets to pick meat out of cans, quietly helping her mother force feed her friend named Abby who was refusing to eat. The group made it to Bahía Blanca, where they joined a swarm of the displaced escaping the American surprise offensive. They learned that their home was irrecoverably lost, Choele Choel was burning down and their properties were destroyed even if the river valley could ever be retaken, which was doubtful given the current military situation. They were advised to relocate to a sympathetic foreign country as refugees. The family secured their place on a ship bound for Britain after a few days of background checks. Martín's papers had been complete, but they had still nearly been denied, and Lena was hypersensitive to the stress her parents were enduring to secure them safety. They left the children they’d rescued in the hands of officials to hopefully be reunited with their various parents- almost all statuses still unknown- and Lena never got to say goodbye to her friends, perhaps not processing what was going on as shock and severe insomnia rendered her inert. The family left for Britain by the early weeks of December, and Lena spent her sixth birthday in a refugee camp in Bristol. The family remained in the camp as they had no financial resources and required assistance. Relocation of the family from there took about a year of wrestling with various bureaucratic processes hemmed by language barriers. Lena still struggled with insomnia, refusing to sleep because she had strong and recurrent nightmares. Her parents and grandpa occupied and distracted themselves earning additional rations through work and service. Also, her father especially was having difficulty adjusting to the new surroundings and culture shock, splitting her mother and grandpa's emotional attention. Lena, quiet and sometimes feeling like a burden, had to occupy her own time and help herself try to recover. Schooling was provisionally provided to the refugee children, Lena dedicated herself to study to occupy her mind. She wasn’t particularly smart and the poor quality of teaching meant she struggled with important subjects like mathematics and English. She was quite shut in, more or less refusing to talk except squeaking out answers when the teacher elected to call on her, she was far too uncomfortable with strangers to want to make friends, who also reminded her of the friends she hadn’t seen since leaving Argentina. Often feeling lonely, Lena took up her free time and her sleepless nights with art, which soothed her and put her into a better mental space. A lack of supplies in camp meant she worked with what she had. Oftentimes she found the easiest medium she had access to was tracing figures in the dirt or sand. She learned to manipulate the ground with water to wet it so she could have a clearer surface to trace with her fingers, and her tracings were often innocuous landscapes, or religious iconography. Church became very important to her during this time period, especially as it was often the only daily time her parents could set to be together with her. At the end of their difficult, year long period of vetting and acquiring sponsorship the Bianchis were relocated to Bellington. Martín had been able to prove via calls to the Argentinian embassy that he had relevant work skills, the deal was that he would provide business and technical support to modernize local farms for market competitiveness, in exchange for required government assistance. The family was moved into an apartment. The government also provided healthcare subsidies and psychologist references, and the family attended group therapy sessions which proved initially fruitful. Lena proved responsive to play and art therapy, and had a close relationship with her assigned therapist Josie Potter, who did fingerpaints together with her. Therapy sessions had much to sort out: besides the traumas of what they family had experienced, they also all had difficulty settling into such a small community, as they had no friends and they stuck out. All four of them felt somewhat isolated, using Spanish at home instead of adopting English as their preferred language. The family continued to devotedly go to church on routine, multiple times a week. Church was a good place to start building connections, and they slowly gained at least a few family friends, who Lena cherished as she was able to connect with them with faith as their commonality. Her friends helped her learn better English. Youth services in Bellington’s church encouraged the children to help raise funds with crafts projects, Lena thus found a happy niche for herself with her talents. She made a few somewhat close friends though after-school and weekend crocheting and bead projects, lanyards, scarves, so on. Her friends tended to be older than her but she felt a kinship with them, quiet as she tended to be. She preferred them to kids in school, they were less judgmental, as in school Lena found her artistry often invited petty jealousy which her hypersensitive nature found difficult to tolerate, sometimes in school she would shut down under peer pressure, and she struggled with an inability to trust the teachers and open up to them. In contrast, her friends from church were gentler, and kinder. The church families got together for Christmas of 2013, Lena first real party with a lot of people, and she found she greatly enjoyed getting lost in the merriment and the bombast of holiday decor. The following Christmas when Lena was given a class project to make a custom paper ornament for her family she took it a step further, with her parents permission she decorated the apartment herself, artfully using paper scraps her mother helped her collect from the school, plant trimmings from dad’s work, and lights donated by their church. Her parents invited the family friends over for a small get-together when she was done, and she was ecstatic that her decoration work was so enjoyed. As part of her ongoing individual therapy for her still regular nightmares and social maladjustment. Josie began to help her experiment with things like meditation and music therapy. Lena's anxious and somewhat lethargic demeanor after her experiences as a refugee lent her to exploring slower forms of anxiety control, and she found she naturally had an inclination towards both. Like art meditation in particular focused her, she found she felt refreshed and relieved of some inherent tensions and stress when she had an empty mind focused on solely breath and the unconscious sensations of her body. They also helped her maintain some rational mind, and she learned to tune out negativity, providing her some degree of protection against those in school who bullied her. She dedicated herself to daily practice of meditation, along with easy and light yoga stretches as instructed by her therapist. Her practice carried on through the years, she actively makes time- up to thirty minutes daily- for meditation almost no matter the circumstances, as it helps her stay calm and relaxed like nothing else does. Her grandpa and mother both picked up custodial jobs at a flour mill to help the family out. In his free time Alejandro would hitch a ride with local friends-slash-drunkards and they’d go out into the wilderness and shoot small fireworks while drinking. Lena's old interest in fireworks had been rekindled to an extent, she loved the nostalgic smell of gunpowder and metals used for coloration, but when the boys brought her out along with her father on a weekend she found she was badly startled by firework explosions. She had to come home early, hyperventilating into her father’s chest, and the incident was reported to her therapist, who believed she likely had a potential trigger with gunfire-like noises. Thus Lena focused on simple, quiet activities. At school the loudness of the playground and the multitude of strange faces became increasingly unnerving to her, so she’d preferentially stay in the classroom when allowed, or a lonely corner of the schoolyard. A few classroom friends stayed with her, similar quiet sorts who preferred sketching together and cloud watching to any sort of roughhousing. Her friends in school tended to be those from her church, and she was little inclined to make other friends. As she progressed through primary education bullies would remained, who teased her for looking poor, or for her stubborn accent, and she refused to engage with such people further for how they hurt her. She was also disinclined to put too much effort into academics, now that her time was otherwise suitably occupied, and her grades fell some to B’s and C’s due to sometimes skipping homework to help out around the house or sketch instead. Her father approved, assuming it was unlikely Lena would be headed to college. He had ambitions of the two of them taking out a loan and building up a new family farm that he shared with her, Lena herself approved, seeing little interest in an academic future. He began to teach her the broad details of agricultural management and horticulture, as appropriate for her age. She didn't particularly care for the pursuit, but still preferred it as an alternative, and did not wish to disappoint her father. Hardships further bogged the family down, however, starting in Lena's fifth year. Mariana leg's was severely injured by a machine accident. The operation to recover functionality of her leg was a failure, and also a costly bill that the government refused fully cover due to various bureaucratic issues. Martín tried to bring his case to court, outraged, but his pride only ended up costing the family more money they didn't have. Now crippled, Mariana would need a wheelchair and could no longer work, along with the burdens of further physical rehabilitation and psychological support. Money was now rough. Lena now had no supplies for school, let alone art. Intimidated by borrowing even from friends unless they offered first she did so rarely and resorted to her old methods from camp, scrounging sometimes from garbage cans and showing a certain resourcefulness in recycling for her art in making collages and such. Lena sometimes witnessed the men of the house going without food for the day, and she witnessed arguments among the adults that traumatized her to some extent, given her existing sensitivities to conflict. Lena helped out however she could. She was often at her mother's side in the clinic or at home, the two forged a strong bond as mother and daughter, with the daughter now having the role of helping her own mother out far earlier than most children took on that role. Mariana was wracked with guilt and feelings of being a burden, and Lena's support was crucial for her. Lena taught Mariana how to meditate, even though her mother didn’t take to it as easily as she had the sentiment was appreciated and Lena took some satisfaction in spending quiet time with her mother. Meanwhile, the therapy sessions began to fall by the wayside as time and budget were tight, eventually they voluntarily stopped receiving that government aid entirely so they could reallocate their assistance funds into medical and rent assistance. Lena missed Josie, Josie felt a certain duty to the family and offered to keep helping pro bono, but an offended Martín wouldn't hear it. Lena was distracted as she was between continuing school and the work she had to do around the home to help the adults run things, but she never forgot Josie and the two would sometimes meet in town, an event that causes Lena pain and happiness whenever it occurs. Lena helped her father out with some of his mundane duties on the farms to allow him to focus on other matters. Lena actively avoided duties involving loud equipment and machinery, thus relegating her to animal care. Lena actually does not particularly like animals, citing her many disgusting experiences with them on the farm, though she appreciates the quiet time working to herself when cleaning animal pens, helping out with milking and breeding, so on. By the time Lena entered high school the family had roughly stabilized. Mariana was now self-sufficient enough with expertise of her wheelchair, though both mother and daughter still appreciated each other’s company. Finances, while not good, were stable, with Martín's industriously working. The family made a decision to not return to therapy, even though the government was willing to provide now that Mariana's medical costs had been paid down. The adults felt the worst was behind them and perhaps underappreciated the help that therapy had been for them, Lena quietly acquiesced to their decisions. Lena started once more suffering from recurrent nightmares and sleep paralysis, along with a lack of sleep, but she almost appreciated the extra time despite the painful exhaustion accrued, it gave her time and a lonely hour of the night to be inspired artistically by. She became a coffee drinker like the other adults in the household, and soon enough was drinking the lion’s share. Lena was admitted to St. Editha with an art scholarship, vouched for by her priest and other senior members of her parish. Her first year was business as usual socially, as she lost some friends from her parish but gained others, and social anxiety and her usual quiet demeanor prevented her from making many additional friends. She didn’t particularly care for most of her classes. Lena developed an interest in non-Christmas holiday seasons around this time of her life, as planning and drafting up holiday celebrations and decorations was an interesting way to pass her plentiful free time and lonely nights. Her interests included common ideas like Valentine’s and St. Patrick’s, but they extended beyond locally celebrated holidays, including Latin holidays like Dia de Muertos and American holidays like the Fourth of July. Lena considers herself a quietly proud anti-American, but compartmentalizes her interests in holidays separately from her strong anti-American sentiments. Still, she is careful to keep some of her festive musings to herself, she has scraps around the home in a binder with inspiration she finds online. After helping a friend in student government in her eighth year do Christmas season decorations and set them up around the school Lena has realized in general her tremendous interest in interior design. Her practice is unimpeded by the knowledge that she will likely be following in her father’s footsteps instead of going to college to study, she still enjoys beautifying her family apartment, with the blessing of her mother. She also finds home magazines and books to be engaging reading, and she develops aesthetics even if they are far above her budget, adding them to her binder of inspiration. Indeed she’s found a modest source of revenue in the process: she can occasionally sell her more unique and artfully crafted ornaments and knick-knacks to friends and her parish, turning a positive profit due to her knack for crafting on a budget. Money earned usually finds its way into her family budget, which satisfies her. Lena continued to have little daylight time outside of school because she continues to shadow her father at work. She did her art in the dead of the night when not able to sleep, leaving her few daylight hours mostly for church. Church remained the center of her social community, where she’s somewhat comfortable with being quietly friendly instead of awkward and standoffish as she normally is in school. Through church she maintains volunteering opportunities, feeling as she matures a certain need to give back, and feeling advocacies that strengthen her sense of security with herself and her faith. She’s tried to volunteer at a local orphanage through her church but found she wasn’t the best equipped for the loud and rowdy environment, however she maintains a certain sense of kinship with disadvantaged children, given how she can relate to many of their stories. Her volunteering typically involved doing work around the church, or neighborhood beautification projects alongside others who were artistically inclined, the sort of folk she was usually comfortable with. A somewhat late puberty armed Lena in high school with a growing sense of self-sufficiency, as much as she tried to live dutifully for her family she also developed a sense of the importance of caring for herself as much as others. She’d kept up her meditation, but began to experiment herself, and supplement it with other ideas. She remembered music therapy with her old therapist, it had been a dead end, but she was intrigued in reviving the idea. The family only had one outdated business computer that Lena rarely used, but she began downloading music to a friend’s outdated MP3 player she received as a gift. She found most forms of energetic music stressed her out mildly, but she enjoyed classical genres, namely Gregorian chants with more choir-like progressions. Armed with this knowledge Lena made a decision that improved her school life some, she swapped out one of her math classes she didn’t need for graduation for a school choir class. She has a relatively weak voice but she enjoyed singing in a group, and she would further apply this in her church, joining the carolers. Singing, she found, did calm her in a group setting especially as it allowed her to focus on her own technique and breathing instead of what others in the group were doing. Peers who knew her by this point as one of the quiet ones were surprised by her in choir, being relatively talkative and engaged. Lena now counts a number of friends in her choir class, and she also keeps recordings gifted from her choir teacher of acapella covers and classical music that can help her have more peaceful sleep sessions at night, slowly trying to get her sleep schedule back on track, though her self-therapy is ultimately only marginally effective. She’s settled into a routine. She wakes early in the morning after about three hours of sleep on average and rarely gets back to sleep, she’ll fold origami, crochet, or paint ornaments and baubles to pass the time until it’s time for school. In school she gets C’s and D’s and averages a 2.5 GPA from semester to semester. Her only goal is to pass and the only class she really looks forward to is choir. She's well used to a lack of sleep and thrives with her insomnia, though she is essentially addicted to caffeine and has sometimes dramatic lapses of attention and focus due to the exhaustion not always being possible to maintain. After school she often goes to the farms or to a church function. She hopes to help her dad build up his farm, which he hopes to take the initial loan for after three to four more years of saving up. She considers working full time to help her dad save or allow her grandpa to retire, and she distantly hopes of owning a good home someday. Building a family of her own broadly appeals to her, though she is uncertain of her sexuality due to a low sex drive and disinterest in dating. Socially she continues to avoid most who she is not familiar with due to general anxiety around others. Advantages: Lena has a well developed dexterity and sense of craftsmanship that may allow her to salvage items on island into advantageous equipment such as improvised weapons, traps, or other creative usages of her environment. She is used to solitude and may have some advantage in working with her own initiative and maintaining a healthy mentality. Disadvantages: Lena suffers from the symptoms of PTSD and has extant triggers like sudden loud noises which may compromise her in dangerous situations. Her lack of social status and ability may inhibit her from working well in alliance situations, limiting her options. Her insomniac tendencies may have an impact on her energy levels, without her usual coping mechanisms available to her. Designated Number: Female Student #4 --- Designated Weapon: Combat knife w/ sniper scope (non-removable) Conclusion: Now that's some kind of luck. Welcome back to the battlefield, Miss Bianchi, time to show us what you've got. The above biography is as written by Cicada Nights. No edits or alterations to the author's original work have been made. Evaluations Handled by: 'Cicada Nights '''Kills: 'Calista Carpenter 'Killed By: '''Fell through the wharf '''Collected Weapons: '''Combat knife w/ sniper scope (non-removable) (assigned weapon, left behind) '''Allies: ' 'Enemies: 'Calista Carpenter 'Mid-game Evaluation: ' 'Post-Game Evaluation: ' '''Memorable Quotes: Other/Trivia Threads Below is a list of threads containing Lena, in chronological order. Sandbox: *All On A Day Program V3: *Illusion Ain't Revolution *Mr. Wharf? Fire. Your Thoughts Whether you were a fellow handler in SOTF or just an avid reader of the site, we'd like to know what you thought about Lena Bianchi. What did you like, or dislike, about the character? Let us know here! Category:Program V3 Characters